This invention relates to food production and particularly to the apparatus and method for freezing a sheet of a comminuted meat product and for automatically cutting and forming serving size patties from the frozen sheet.
Many different types of processors have been developed for automatically and rapidly forming individual servings of ground meat products which are later frozen, packaged and marketed for eventual use as, for example, hamburger steaks or sandwich patties, Salisbury steaks, buttered steaks, etc. In the production of virtually all of this type of convenience food, the product is cut and formed while it is at a room temperature and, ultimately, frozen and packaged. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,347,176 describes an automatic patty press that molds meat at room temperature into non-compacted patties that are later frozen and packaged. Other types of patty-forming apparatus overcome the dangers inherent in permitting ground or chopped meat to be processed at room temperatures and therefore utilize refrigerated die members to simultaneously form and freeze the room temperature meat. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,852,507 describes equipment that presses meat between refrigerated die members to form a loaf having a uniform cross-section that is frozen to a depth of approximately one-eighty of an inch for facilitating subsequent slicing, freezing and packaging. Still another type, such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,463,924, extrudes and spreads the ground meat product on a refrigerated endless belt which passes beneath rotary blades that score the frozen meat which may later be broken into rectangular serving portions.